Contact: Maridith Geuder
STARKVILLE, Miss.--Winner of a Tony Award for Excellence in Theater, The Acting Company concludes Mississippi State's 2008-09 Lyceum Series with its production of "The Spy."
The 7:30 p.m. program April 14 in Lee Hall auditorium is part of a world premiere season for the drama. Set during the Revolutionary War and based on author James Fenimore Cooper's novel, "The Spy" is considered the first American historical fiction.
Available at the door, tickets are $15 for adults; $12 for MSU faculty and staff and senior citizens (65 and over, by request), and $8 for children ages 3-12. MSU students will be admitted free with campus identification cards. All seats purchased at the door are general admission.
Continuing its highly praised series of commissioned new plays adapted from American literary masterpieces, the Los Angeles-based troupe brings to the stage a drama crafted by well-known playwright Jeffrey Hatcher, who also produced a screenplay of the Henry James novel "The Turn of the Screw."
As Cooper wrote it in 1821--less than four decades after America won the revolution--"The Spy" tells the story of this nation's first spy and double agent. Considered Cooper's best historical romance, it presents through the eyes of a New York family both sides of the eight-year struggle between the 13 colonies and Mother England.
The Acting Company, founded in 1972 by Oscar-winning actor and producer John Houseman, has launched the careers of such actors as Kevin Kline, Jesse L. Martin and David Ogden Stiers.
Production of "The Spy" is made in association with the Guthrie Theater of Minneapolis, Minn. John Miller-Stephany, associate artistic director of the famed regional theater, directs.
For more information on this MSU Lyceum Series program, telephone 662-325-4201 or visit www.msstate.edu/dept/lyceum or www.theactingcompany.org.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.